Saying So
by Zayz
Summary: Significantly LJ. Lily confides in Alice about a sudden, mildly alarming development in her relationship with James. Discussion between the two ensues. R&R?


**A/N**: This is random. I know that. It's been lingering on my computer for months now, and I finally finished it today, wondering where it came from and why I wrote it. But that's okay, because I am spacey by nature and it's not exactly uncommon for me to know absolutely nothing about where my ideas come from.

You may have mixed feelings about this story. That's totally fine. But remember to please read and review either way because I like to know these things.

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**Saying So  
****By: Zayz**

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"Alice?"

Lily Evans's hesitant, unusually broad voice calls for her best friend in the twilight of another Thursday evening, preparing for the Friday high that will carry them through the next day.

As of now, the sun seems to kiss the horizon-line good-bye as it sinks low, too low, behind the edges of human vision, leaving chaotically grand smears of red and orange and gold behind in its wake; blue is pushing in, students are winding down, and Lily is seeking Alice Prewitt, her tone tremulous and startlingly so.

Lily isn't normally a tremulous person. She has far too much confidence for that – which is one of the reasons Alice Prewitt joins her friend more quickly than usual.

"Hey Lils," Alice says, her demurely brown eyes curious. "What's going on?"

"I have to talk to you about something," Lily says. "Something…important."

Something about her tone is ominous as these words escape her full, rosy lips. Alice's ears are pricked up at once, and her eyes narrow slightly, attempting to search through her friends mind for the reason behind this sudden change in mood. Since she can't figure it out, she simply nods and says, "Sure, Lil. You want to tell me here, or upstairs?"

"Upstairs, if you don't mind," Lily says, her green eyes as passive and closed as Alice's are open and inquisitive.

"Lead the way," is all Alice has to say to give Lily leave to drag her friend up the staircase, in an apparent hurry. The two girls, the redhead wispily slender and the brunette with a shorter, more solid build, ascend the flight of stairs to their dormitory, and settle down on Alice's bed, sitting together, the last rays of sunlight and the first rays of moonlight casting a confused mix of light on both girls' faces.

"So what's going on?" Alice wants to know, unable to keep her ravenous appetite for Lily's current dilemma out of her voice. Alice thinks it's a particularly worrying bit of gossip, which concerns both girls equally in a school of this cozy size; but Lily's expression when Alice demands an explanation suggests that it isn't the case this time.

"It's…it's about James," the redhead admits, fiddling with the edges of her shirt, her bright green eyes averted from Alice's face, her tone embarrassed and urgent and apprehensive all at once.

"James?" Now her friend is _very _worried – Lily has been dating her fellow Head, James Potter, for the past month and a half without serious incident, surprisingly enough. They have been getting along quite well up until now; in fact, James has been on Cloud Nine since their first date, and Lily's opinion has been much the same.

If any couple is in trouble at the moment, it can't be Lily and James; so Alice feels it necessary to insert, "Has everything been okay so far?"

"Yeah, yeah, it's been brilliant," Lily says so genuinely her companion can't find anything in her to doubt this statement. "It's been…it's been amazing. It has; truly it has."

"Then when it's going on?" Alice repeats, feeling like a broken tape-player. "Did you row or something?"

"No…" Lily's face is quite the shade of rosy pink by now, clashing with the hair she's currently twirling with her fingers in all her nervousness. "It's not a row…"

"Then _what_?" The brunette looks about ready to explode, not in the mood for her friend's evasive behavior.

The redhead takes a long breath and finally confesses, "This afternoon, when we were about to leave our last class, he stopped me at the door and he told me he loved me."

Alice stops short. She stares as only she can, her eyes boring into Lily like brown moles. She doesn't speak and her expression is undecipherable, calculating.

Seconds pass and the silence is uncomfortable. Lily chews on her lips and lets her gaze avert to the floor, tucking her own hair behind her ear so nervously. She doesn't look at Alice when she so softly inquires, "Alice, what do I do?"

Alice breathes out slowly, carefully, elegantly, with the grace of a long-time yoga expert fighting to keep her cool. She appears to be making up her mind about her answer. She waits a while, the seconds ticking by, the tiny dormitory space being awkwardly filled by the silence between the two young women.

She looks to her best friend with a look of gentle determination, and waits those crucial seconds until Lily's eyes have shyly met hers before she says, "You tell him the truth."

This confuses Lily, makes her pupils widen and her movements constrict and invokes the hint of fear in her features. Alice sees the shift in her demeanor very clearly, and asks with the deft prettiness of a ballet dancer taking a silent leap across the stage, "Do you love him, Lils?"

"Love is a word I am wary of," Lily confesses, her lips loose and her tone simple. The last dying streaks of gold light caress the intricate angles of her well-crafted face and leave her looking somber, exposed, raw – like a film scene of emotional vulnerability without the music in the background. "I feel plenty for him, but I'm not sure if that's love. I'm not sure if we've been dating long enough to allow the use of that word."

She takes a breath, a long, deliberate breath that is as rickety as flimsy old steps in an age-old Victorian house. She repeats: "So, what do I do?"

The brunette swallows thickly and takes her friends hand in both her own, her touch less like a friend and more like that of a wise sister who has seen many such matters in her years. "I think you ought to differentiate your emotions now, when he's not here, rather than later when he is," she says, blunt although her quivering tone betrays her sentimentality. "There is a difference between love and lust."

"You're right," she says. "Lust is the chocolate box of emotions, while love…love is the diamond in the rough, the real thing." She considers. "Right now, I think I am the hardening chocolate in the rough."

Alice moistens her lips with her dainty pink tongue, a pained restraint visible in her brown eyes, and says in a whisper that had not the strength to disturb the smallest flower petal, "Then tell him he makes you happy. Don't tell him you love him unless you're sure you do. It is easy for a boy to change his mind when that kind of commitment is dangled above his head."

Her gorgeous eyes, as sweetly brown as earth itself, begin to divulge the presence of moisture about her eyelids. A sensitive spot has been touched by a touch far too brash and it is Lily's turn to take her friend's hands and take over the comforting role, her familiar strength of character beginning to glimmer back in her eyes.

"I will wait," she says. "I owe it to him to be sure."

"But tell him soon," Alice advises, still that soft, her gaze holding Lily's with difficulty. "'I love you' are the three strongest, pithiest words you can say to someone and he'll be nervous, now that he's said them to you. Don't leave him hanging too long."

Lily gives Alice's hands a squeeze, brief but warm, firm. Her irises, so deeply and fathomlessly green, are not as subdued as they were before. The sun has almost disappeared entirely, the last feeble fringes of daylight struggling helplessly against the blue of the Thursday evening, and the girls remain here, unspoken understanding passing between them as they watch the other.

Then Lily says in a tone of passive awe, "Alice, what if I do really love him? How would I tell him?"

Alice smiles wryly and says, bittersweet but optimistic, "You'll do what I didn't; you'll wait until it's quiet and he is ready for the weight of your words." She takes a breath. "You'll say the three strongest, pithiest words you can say to someone and your relationship will change. Just like that."

"That's terrifying," Lily says, her expression significant.

Alice's brown eyes begin to wander off of her friend and towards the window, where the stars are beginning to twinkle and shyly reveal themselves, glimmering in the growing dark. The light of the moon reflects off her irises and she says, "I know. And that's why you have to do it."

The two young women sit in the midst of still hush, Lily watching with Alice the night come out to play. They're still holding hands, at ease with each other yet somehow tense with the exchange between them, when Lily murmurs almost to herself than to Alice, "I'm going to tell him tomorrow. Tell him that I love him."

Alice's hand rises to touch her friend's curly scarlet locks, stroking them gently and allowing her to rest her cheek on her shoulder. "Do that," she says. "You won't know what will happen, but it's better to try. He should know how you feel."

Lily nods, the gesture slow but steadily so. "I wonder what he'll say," she muses with a touch of light humor greatly contrasting their previous conversation, "when I tell him that his life-long dream has finally come to pass. I think I love him. What is the world coming to?"

And Alice can only smile.

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**A/N**: Yeah, there's a bit of a mystery with this one if you look close enough, but I'm leaving that unsolved. You can pick your own reason for it. This is just a conversation between two friends about a relationship. Inside information is not to be revealed.

Review, por favor?


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